Indecision: causes and what can help
Every day we make countless decisions — whether to get out of bed, what to have for breakfast, what to wear, or what time to leave for work. Some decisions are easy; we may even make them unconsciously. We get in the car and drive the usual route to the office. Other decisions are harder, like leaving a job or moving to another country. Some people become paralysed even by the smallest decision.
If you’re having difficulties making an important decision at the moment, or struggle with decision-making in general, read on. Below are some reasons why you may be finding it difficult to decide — and what may help you make up your mind.
You don’t have enough information to make an informed decision
Before choosing a psychologist, for example, you may need to know their location, fees, whether they treat your specific concern, and what their therapeutic approach is. Without this information, it can be hard to make a decision.
The solution here is simple: you just need to find out these details. If the psychologist is local, treats your problem, you like their approach, and their fees are within your budget, you may go ahead and book a session.
2. The decision is complex
Some things are not so straightforward. The psychologist may meet all the criteria, but your budget might be limited, and you may need to compromise on other things.
You can gain more clarity by writing down the pros and cons of starting therapy — and then the pros and cons of not starting therapy. These lists may seem identical at first, but often they are not, and doing both can make things clearer.
3. Some decisions can’t be made with logic alone
We can decide on our car insurance policy using only reason — we look for a good price from a reputable company. But important life decisions often need to involve our emotions too.
To successfully choose a partner or a career, we may need to pay attention to both reason and emotion. This balance is what Dialectical Behaviour Therapy calls Wise Mind. When we are in a Wise Mind state, we access what we know, deep inside, to be true.
One way to connect with this inner knowing is through Focusing. In Focusing, we look inwards for a bodily “felt sense” — a subtle sense that holds everything we know and feel about the problem. You can try this: when faced with two job options, pause and imagine yourself doing one of them. Notice how your body feels about it. Then imagine doing the other job and check again. You may find that they feel very different — and one may feel more “right” inside.
4. Fear of not being able to cope with the wrong decision
Some people feel the need to control every detail to ensure a perfect outcome. They fear the consequences of getting it wrong.
For example, they may spend enormous amounts of time and energy planning every detail of their holidays: where they’ll stay, what they’ll see, even where and what they’ll eat. They may stress themselves so much that it takes the fun out of going away.
If the holiday turns out fine in the end, this behaviour gets reinforced. They might tell themselves that it went well because of all the effort they put into planning — and they don’t get the chance to learn that they would also have been okay without all that stress.
If you relate to this, you can gradually learn to be more spontaneous by experimenting with making small decisions without overthinking. As you do this more and more, you’re likely to discover that you can cope even when things don’t go perfectly.
For some people, however, anything that doesn’t go their way can throw them off balance. In these cases, it can help to learn emotion regulation and distress tolerance strategies such as mindfulness, paced breathing, or safe-place visualisation.
If your emotional dysregulation stems from past trauma, you may benefit from therapy to process it, so that you can learn to trust yourself and the world — to know that even if things don’t go as planned, you’ll be able to handle it.
If you’d like support in exploring this further, I can help you with that.
